Month: September 2011

Last time President Obama touted a Fremont company it didn’t end well. Let’s hope the FBI won’t have to pay a visit to Will Kim and Happy Day Microfunds. Last week, we wrote about the 17-year-year-old Mission San Jose student who started a microloan operation.

Well, from our keyboard to Obama’s lips, the president mentioned Kim today in his Back-to-School address. Click here for the story.

A Raider fan celebrated his team’s rare success Sunday with a lot of booze. He was honest with police about why he was swerving his car through Niles, but that didn’t stop them from arresting for DUI.

A resident on Philadelphia Place saw two teens enter a neighbor’s home through a window. She not only called police, she told the two young burglars she had called police. When informed that the cops were on the way, they dropped the loot and fled into a waiting get-away car.

A man fought back against an armed robber Monday near the intersection of Mowry and Hastings. The victim kept his stuff, but left the scuffle with a bullet in his butt cheek.

From Berkeley:
It looks like an old Fremont hand is in line to become Berkeley City Manager. Christine Daniel, who left Fremont about the time I arrived, was singled out as a capable successor in the resignation letter penned by the outgoing city manager.

A drunk driving a Toyota Tundra didn’t stop at a red light on Mission Boulevard and East King Avenue. But the two motorists in front of him did stop at the light. The Tundra plowed into both vehicles, sending one careening into a light pole and rolling over onto its side or hood. The 83-year-old driver of that vehicle died. The drunk, who had been running several red lights at earlier intersections, was arrested.

Here’s an exciting new blog game. Every Monday I will will dig into the Tri-City Voice archives and and unearth an editorial. I will then post the first graph of the editorial here on the blog. The first person that correctly answers what the editorial is actually about will win a prize that could be anything from homemade sauerkraut to store-bought brownies to the rights to the name “The Argus of Fremont, Newark and Union City.”

Here is the first paragraph of a recent editorial. Tell me what it’s really about:

Youth empathizes with Maria, a convent postulant; those with a few grey hairs and more years under their belt sympathize with the nuns at Nonnberg Abbey in the 1959 Rogers and Hammerstein musical, The Sound of Music. In the midst of serious and tragic events in Austria leading to World War II, blithe spirits were hard to find and difficult to tolerate especially in a monastic setting. However, a counterpoint to grave and somber circumstance is often a welcome, albeit temporary relief. In the musical, Maria is unsuitable for monastic life but provides the spark necessary to ignite a new life for the von Trapp family amidst menacing Nazis.

There isn’t much reason to be at Mojo’s Lounge at 1:40 a.m. on a Thursday. But there were quite a few people inside the Peralta Boulevard bar and most of them were wannabe pugilists. Several fights broke out as the bar was closing. One man who was trying to break up a fight got the worst of it. Cops found him laying in the street semi-conscious.

A few months ago I met local beekeeper Russel Schaffer. He was bummed that the city denied him a permit to keep his two bee hives after his neighbor complained that they got stung and had family members allergic to bee stings.

Shaffer’s a good guy, and the youngest-looking 75 year old I’ve ever met. His son is also Newark’s former fire chief. But I told him that I couldn’t do a story since it was so obvious that he didn’t have a leg to stand on. He violated city code by getting the hives without a permit. And when he sought the permit — after his neighbor complained about getting stung — the cops had little choice but to deny it based on the city code that makes a neighbor’s complaint grounds for denial. An Argus story would have had a headline out of The Onion, “Man violates city code, complains about it.”

But what do I know?

Shaffer appealed his case to the City Council today, and council members voted 4-1 for him to get the permit, even though he got the bees in violation of city code. I asked one city official about the outcome. He gave the old saying, “Sometimes it’s better to ask forgiveness than to ask permission.”

A pedestrian walking near Curtis and Omar streets dropped a bag when he saw an officer approaching. The officer retrieved the bag, which contained illegal drugs. That led to a search of a home on the 5400 block of Borgia Road, where officers found evidence of drug sales and a very high female occupant.

From the cops:
A resident at the 45000 block of Vineyard Avenue didn’t answer the door when someone knocked Friday. But when the knocker then went to the side of the home and started prying open a garage door, the resident pushed back at the door, scaring off the burglar.

Police responded to a call of a man sitting in a car near Washington High School with a gun on his lap. The gun shot pellets, but, but the man’s license was suspended, and his brain was under the influence of an illegal substance.

A house party on Shattuck Avenue turned violent Saturday. Officers arrived to find several battered, but uncooperative party victims.